It's Not Supposed To Be Fair
Thoughts on college football and scheduling equity
It's Not Supposed To Be Fair
As we meander through the first college football playoff, I’ve noticed a number of articles and forum posts about how it’s unfair that such-and-such team did or did not make it into the 12 team playoff.
The truth of the matter is that the system isn’t designed to be fair from the start.
This is something that I think most college football fans recognize instinctively, but don’t really know how to articulate. The lack of balanced schedules and the habit that established “blue blood” schools have of scheduling easy opposition is a tradition that goes back over a century.
The true problem with modern college football is not the presence of preseason rankings. Rather, it’s the idea that “good” teams are the teams that finish the season undefeated regardless of the quality of their opposition. The concept of “quality” itself is tied closer to how well established a club is than to anything else — which is the reason why you see a struggling team like Alabama ranked higher than a Michigan team with a poor record that has played well lately.
If I were in charge, I’d eliminate the entire conference structure, design regional conferences, and create a postseason featuring only the winners of each regional conference. The current system simply cannot be equitable or fair no matter what you do, and, in my opinion, really should be discarded.
One reason why I’ve spent time digging back into the ancient history of college football is to try to determine precisely how the current system came to be. In the 1880s, the Ivy League schools were the only “blue blood” schools, and every other team in the country was just a title hopeful. As things developed over time, the Ivy League schools eventually fell from their lofty position in favor of the newcomers — but we’re talking about decades and decades. Remember that even Yale was ranked in the top 20 as recently as 1972. The staying power of tradition and memory is unusually strong in college football, and tends to overwhelm all other forms of analysis.
Anyway, keep that in mind the next time you want to complain about the playoff. In my opinion, the sport has become considerably less watchable as the endless quest for a national championship destroys local rivalries and good storylines.